


found the place to rest my head

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mostly freeform, Nightmares, PTSD implications, post 3x02, potential triggers for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 15:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4965634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There is howling in her head and the taste of blood in her mouth and before she even knows whether she is awake or asleep, Jemma’s fingers have closed around the slither of wood in her fist.</p>
<p>There is grit under his fingernails and fingers slipping through his own, and her name is on his lips ready to scream before Fitz really knows what is happening."</p>
            </blockquote>





	found the place to rest my head

**Author's Note:**

> Like I think a lot of people are, I'm still reeling from that last episode in the best possible way. I am also far more ecstatic about my favourite character getting a recognised PTSD arc than it is probably normal to be, but here I am. I am so excited to watch this part of Jemma's story unfurl and I can only trust that the writers will do it justice for us.
> 
> I realise that this has probably been done a lot, but I had a few ideas of my own and I was so struck by the end scene of the episode that I just had to write up my own thoughts and extension of it. Obviously there's been some heartbreaking discussions of the scene on tumblr and twitter and if my brain has accidentally picked up too much of your idea then I'm really sorry!! Feel free to let me know and I'll give you credit for it.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this!

 

 

There is howling in her head and the taste of blood in her mouth and before she even knows whether she is awake or asleep, Jemma’s fingers have closed around the slither of wood in her fist.

Then the dream is gone and she is awake again, a rush of adrenaline snapping her body upright, sending her legs scrambling backwards and she jerks her arm out, brandishing the stick in front of her towards the danger in a reaction that has become as natural to her as breathing.

_Fight or flight?_

It is an innate response, instinctive. It is the most animal of all human instincts.

Over the past few months, Jemma has learnt not to cower before her animal side. After all, lots of times it’s been the only thing that’s kept her alive.

But as the buzzing in her ears dies down and she starts to hear her reason again over the thundering of her heart, Jemma’s death grip on her stick falls slack as she realises.

She isn’t _there_ anymore.

There is no wasteland here. No endless night with the shadows of two, alien moons looming above her, no merciless sandstorms to whip through her hair and against her skin, turning it blistered and bloody. There are no other-worldly cries on the horizon, suddenly horrifyingly close, close enough to send her lurching into action, scrambling across dunes and tumbling down cliffs as though the only purpose she has ever had in life has been to run.

Instead there is a bed, one that she has been carefully placed in and arranged comfortably, with blankets and pillows and a feather-soft mattress that feels smothering on her skin like she is drowning in it. There are four walls, covered in the same, achingly familiar honeycomb pattern that the cage had been back on the Bus, and low lighting that Jemma can see has been set specifically low enough to allow for sleep uninterrupted but still with enough light so that she can be monitored when necessary.

There is nothing to be afraid of here. Nothing, except for the nightmares in her own head.

Swallowing back the bitter, copper taste on her tongue, Jemma slowly turns her head to the side.

She isn’t sure if she can allow herself to expect to see him; she is _hoping_ , yes, she is hoping with every fibre of herself that she has left that he is what she will see, but she doesn’t quite allow herself to expect it.

_After all_ , the nasty little voice at the back of Jemma’s head, a voice she has been alone with for far too long, whispers spitefully, _what are the chances that none of this is real anyway?_

Statistically, incredibly high.

Fitz is sitting on the floor about a metre away from her, with his back pressed against the wall and his hands open in his lap. His head is lolled back on the wall and his eyes are shut, but there is a slight frown creasing up his forehead even in his sleep.

A wave of dizzying relief crashes over Jemma’s head, so hard that she sways, her body struggling to hold her up under the weight of it.

_Of course he is here._

_Where else would he be?_

Jemma lowers her splinter of wood.

She pushes back the sheets and swings her feet around to the floor. She doesn’t remember much about the past few…hours? It must have been hours. _It can’t have been days_ , she thinks absently to herself, but with the regular moon cycles across the sky that she had been using to count her days gone, she cannot be sure anymore.

What she _is_ sure of is that enough time must have passed between Fitz pulling her back through the portal – oh god, Fitz, Fitz calling her name across the universe, Fitz reaching for her through the darkness, Fitz bringing her home, _Fitz_ , _home_ \- for her team to have cleared her through medical, cleaned her wounds and even stripped her of the tattered clothes she had been wearing for so long she had been starting to wonder if they would become welded to her skin.

A faint memory resurfaces, of long fingers gently massaging her scalp and the feel of soap suds on her forehead. _They washed my hair_. The idea is so alien to her, so comic, that Jemma almost feels like laughing. If only she could remember how to do that

Her feet are bare as she pads cautiously towards Fitz, half expecting him to jerk awake as her shadow falls over him but he doesn’t. He stays asleep, the heaviness of his eyelids evidence of his own exhaustion and a sight that makes Jemma’s chest ache, even through the hazy, fractured mess of her mind.

Despite that though, it is almost reassuring to know that the only thing that is still more innate to her than fight or flight is Fitz.

Still keeping her eyes on his face, she bends down, feeling her bones creak under the pressure like she has aged forty years over a matter of months. The floor is cold, and hard, and unforgiving but Fitz’s face is soft enough to cushion that.

She is now close enough to him to lay her head on his thigh, her hand automatically coming up to tuck a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. The delicacy of the gesture startles her a little. After so long of needing to be hard, it is unbelievable to think that she still has some gentleness left inside her.

Jemma feels her eyes close, the warmth of Fitz’s leg underneath her head soothing enough to smooth out her ragged breathing a little, to take some of the tension out of her shoulders. _Real. This time, after all the terrifying times he hadn’t been, he is real_.

She knows that the warmth ought to be enough to reassure her, but even so Jemma finds her hand inching upwards from the floor, her fingers trembling as she reaches out. Fitz’s kneecap is hard under her touch, warm through the fabric of his trousers and most definitely solid. _Real_. Jemma lets out a light exhale of relief as her fingers spread, taking on a life of their own in wanting to touch as much of him as they can, as if he alone has the power to soften her tremors.

Jemma finds her lips pursing upwards in a half-smile, the tears held back behind her closed eyelids, burning. Maybe, for the moment, he does.

_Fight or flight?_

_No_ , Jemma thinks wearily. _Stay_.

 

 

 

There is grit under his fingernails and fingers slipping through his own, and her name is on his lips ready to scream before Fitz really knows what is happening.

He wakes with a gasp before he can scream though, and bites down hard on his tongue to stop it from slipping out anyway.

Automatically, his eyes snap across to the bed and, when he sees it is empty, his heart leaps into his mouth and he thinks he may _have_ to scream, in horror, in warning, to curse the entire universe for bringing _him this bloody close_ before tearing him away again.

It is only then that Fitz feels the addition pressure on his left leg and looks down.

All at once, the words that had been poised in his throat ready to sound the alarm, to kick himself back into the fight mode he has been living in for the past six months, die away only to be replaced by a single name and an almost overwhelming sensation of relief.

Jemma is lying, curled up on her side, next to him with her head on his thigh and her hand on his knee. Her breathing is low, and even, and Fitz realises that she is asleep.

He exhales, slowly.

For a moment, he allows himself the indulgence of letting his hand drift down to her head, pulling his fingers gently through her hair and stroking it smooth. Bobbi had washed Jemma’s hair back in the med pod, after she and Daisy had finished cleaning and changing her, and although the shampoo she had used didn’t have the familiar lavender scent of Jemma’s usual brand there was something about feeling the silkiness of her hair under his fingertips that calmed Fitz immeasurably.

A minute or two passes before he notices that she is shaking. At first, he panics, thinking she is awake after all and the unfamiliarity of his touch, of _any_ touch, has startled her away from him back into the blinding fog of anxiety. But then he realises that the truth is far simpler than that. Pulled out of the cocoon of blankets she had originally been sleeping in and with her back pressed against the cool metal of the floor, the shocks to her systems still reverberating through her body, Jemma is cold. And so, she is shivering.

_Well, we can’t have that now, can we?_

Very slowly, and with the meticulous care he reserves only for nanotechnology and Jemma Simmons, Fitz begins to inch her body upwards. His movements are small and painstakingly slow, but they need to be, primarily not to wake her but also because Fitz is now highly conscious of not wanting to hurt her. He has no idea what parts of her body hurt the most, where he will cause the most pain by applying too much pressure and he is terrified that, after all this time, he will be the one to hurt her further.

He is on his knees with one arm around her back and the other under her bent knees before he realises how ridiculous the thought is.

Of course there isn’t going to be one particular place where the hurt is concentrated. It’s going to hurt _everywhere_ , and it’s going to hurt like hell. The pain might fade with time, but it might never leave completely. Like an old wound that still aches with the first frost of the season, Jemma may still hurt from this years from now. And he might not ever be able to take that away from her, but he can do him damned best to try.

For now, he will have to be content with that.

Gritting his teeth together, Fitz bends his knees and lifts.

Jemma doesn’t even stir as he heaves her up from the floor; her head lolls against his collarbone with a little sigh as she folds into him, her eyes still shut and her lips slightly parted. Fitz tries to swallow back his anxiety over how thin she feels in his arms, how pointed her every edge is where before he had found only softness, as he carries her back to the bed. There, he balances one knee on the sheets before carefully lowering Jemma back onto the mattress, making sure to cushion her head and then pull a blanket up over her.

Once he has assured himself that she will be comfortable, Fitz straightens up, placing his hands on either side of his hips and arching his back to relieve some of the stiffness that has built up there from pent up tension and leaning for too long against the wall. Then he hovers, unsure of what to do next.

Since emerging from the shattered ashes of the monolith that had relentlessly taunted and tormented him for the past six months, he has barely left her side. After Mack had hauled them both up from the hole and Bobbi had carried out an initial medical assessment, before declaring much to everyone’s relief that the only immediate danger was sheer exhaustion, he had help move Jemma onto a gurney that had been brought down then stuck to its side as they took her onto Zephyr One.

In fact, the only time he had left Jemma had been when she was in the med pod and her tox scan had come back clear. Bobbi had entered the room with a bowl of warm water and a towel, giving him an apologetic grimace, but it had only been when Daisy had thrown a pointed look in his direction, and then flicked her gaze down to the pile of clean clothes in her hands that Fitz had understood. He had stumbled, dazed, out of the pod and then lingered restlessly outside with Mack while Coulson attempted a half-hearted debrief for the two team members he had in front of him.

Neither of them had had the nerve to reprimand him for jumping into the portal without permission; Fitz doubted that anyone on the team would ever dare to do that. The only person that he knew for sure would call him out on it would be Jemma, once she was well enough. But he could handle that.

_I can handle anything_ , he thinks. _Just as long as you’re alive_.

He is just about to step backwards and resume his post against the wall when a sudden thought causes him to stop short.

Jemma had been in the bed before he had drifted accidentally into sleep. When he had woken up, she had been on the floor.

Fitz isn’t stupid. He knows that between him going to sleep and waking up something must have happened to force Jemma to make the transition, and that the most likely explanation, and one that causes a tightness in his chest, is that she had a nightmare.

What he can’t understand though is why the ground was suddenly more appealing than the bed after waking from a nightmare…

_Unless_ …

Her head on his lap. Her body pressed close to his. Her fingers gently holding his knee, like it was anchoring her to this world.

It hadn’t been the floor she’d been seeking out, Fitz realises. It had been him.

The thought shouldn’t be as crushing to him as it is.

The bed is quite wide and Jemma is fairly narrow. There is a space next to her that he should be able to lie in without crowding her, something he is acutely aware he shouldn’t do. But she needs him to be close right now, Fitz understands at last.

She needs him, full stop.

He has just lowered himself down onto the mattress next to her when a sharp pain in his lower leg causes him to grunt furiously in an attempt to smother the stream of curse words that have leapt to his lips. Fitz lifts his leg up and digs around in amongst the blankets until he finds the source of the pain and pulls it out to inspect it in the light.

It is a thin piece of wood, about the length of his palm and as thin as a pencil, but whittled at the top to form a knife. Hesitantly, Fitz runs his finger along the edge of the blade. It is sharp, sharp enough to do some serious damage if the attacker was moving fast enough and had a steady hand. Potentially, it could even be lethal if that same attacker had extensive knowledge of the human body and where a victim would bleed out from quickest if their arteries were severed.

On closer inspection, he can see teeth marks on the bark where she has crafted it herself.

_Jesus Christ, Jemma_.

Fitz slides the hand-made knife into his back pocket. This way, if she asks for it later he can give it back to her but it’s not in any position to hurt either of them by accident tonight. He has been desperately trying not to think about what might have been on the other side of the portal, what she might have been through. He knows without having to be told that whatever it had been must have been a thousand times worse than the white-hot despair and anguish that he had experienced back on Earth, but this discovery of her knife sends his fears skyrocketing. What could she have gone through that would make her cling to this scrap of wood, even now, even when she was with _him_ , perfectly safe and perfectly secure? What was there for her to be so afraid of?

_Jesus_ fucking _Christ_.

Jemma’s left hand is lying on the pillow next to him, her palm to the ceiling. Fitz looks at it, and lets out a sharp hiss through his teeth when he sees the smattering of splinters lacing their way through her skin, stark brown against white. He thinks about how desperately hard she must have been clutching the wood to embed those splinters into her hand and a burn of anger for something utterly unknown sears in his mind.

Carefully, Fitz lifts Jemma’s hand towards him and begins to tease at the first splinter with his fingernail and the ball of his thumb, praying that his touch will be gentle enough to keep her asleep.

He has only just lifted the first splinter from her palm when Jemma’s eyes fly open, and Fitz starts backwards at the haunted, wild look in her eyes as her pupils widen and her bottom lip begins to tremble.

Instantly his mind starts to whirl, frantically fumbling for words, for something he can say that will quell the tremor before it can shake her to her very core again. But anything he can think of feels too small; _it’s okay_ or _you’re safe now_.

_I’m sorry_.

But before he can stammer out any of these words, words that are not enough for what he wants to tell her anyway, Jemma’s fist suddenly closes around his hand, which he has not removed from her palm, and holds it in a vice-like grip. She gives a little gasp, and Fitz is close enough to feel her breathing hitch as her gaze flickers left, and then right, before finally settling on him. All at once, the wildness is gone from her face only to be replaced by something frail and lost.

‘Stay?’ she begs, and the way her voice breaks under the strain of the word is enough to crack Fitz’s heart in two.

_Where the hell did she think he was going to go?_

He nods, swallowing back the lump in his throat.

‘Yeah. Course.’

He nods again and Jemma’s body visibly sags as she takes in his reassurance, his presence, his hand in hers. She sinks back onto the mattress, her exhaustion kicking back in, but her eyes still linger open anxiously, unwilling to shut.

In a gesture almost as reckless as jumping through the portal had been, Fitz reaches out an arm to hold her at her waist and let his fingers run softly up and down her back, as though that could absorb the shivers still running down her spine. Momentarily, Jemma freezes, and Fitz instantly draws his hand back, wondering whether he has made a mistake. But then she relaxes, and her eyes fall shut as she lets out a shallow, shaky breath.

‘Stay,’ she murmurs again, already half asleep.

Fitz lets his fingers resume stroking her back, blinking back the sudden tears that have sprung to his eyes.

‘Yeah,’ he repeats. ‘I’ll stay.’

He does not allow himself to close his own eyes until he is certain that Jemma is asleep, and that the splinters in her palm are all gone, and that the trembling through her whole body has stopped, soothed by the comforting familiarity of his own touch.

Then, and only then, does Fitz allow himself to go back to sleep.


End file.
